Yesterday, in the metric of the federal government, Rochester and Syracuse crossed an invisible line in the deep woods of the covid pandemic.
Transmission rates of the virus went from “moderate” to “substantial,” and a Centers for Disease Control recommendation of indoor masking for all people kicked in. Probably at some point today we will find out if the county executives and health departments involved want to invoke that recommendation as a local mandate.
Whatever they decide, their decisions – like almost everything involving covid – will be met with political reactions, based as much on one’s partisan leanings as upon the virus itself. The pandemic of political tribalism is larger, louder and potentially more dangerous than the covid pandemic, and we have turned this affliction into a weapon with which we beat each other every chance we get.
But let’s not do that today.
No mask-wearing virtue signaling, and no vaccine-denying conspiracy theories.
Let’s just look at this recent surge and try to position ourselves to best react to it.
The most immediate thing it does is introduce a potentially crippling element of uncertainty into everything on our calendar.
School superintendents, trying to get information on state guidelines for September’s re-opening, instinctively know that the state education and health departments – barely competent in the best of times – will be paralyzed by the moving target of rising infection. Planners and concessionaries at the state fair wake up to the potential that the event – only recently announced as actually being held this year – could face new restrictions or be closed completely.
How do you staff a business, or order supplies, if you don’t know whether or not it’s going to be able to open, or what restrictions it will face if it does open? How can restaurants putting in a food order have any idea if they will have customers, or if they will be allowed to open, or at what seating capacity?
What do you if your daughter’s wedding is in two weeks, or your big vacation is in four?
Nobody likes uncertainty, and that is particularly true of businesses. And after last year’s government-mandated restrictions on commerce and public gathering, the prospect of a covid spike is chilling. And today, as we get the first hint of how government will respond this time to a covid resurgence, a lot hangs in the balance.
Because the government got it wrong last time.
Especially in New York. Catastrophically in New York.
We learned in the first covid year that government shutdowns achieve nothing and destroy much. New York was the poster child for that. And that raises the question, if there is a second bite of the covid apple, if we have one more bad season, what will the government do?
A bad sign in that regard was the recent announcement by the governor that these sort of decisions will be made locally this time. That’s not about respecting local authority, that’s about passing the buck. And you pass the buck when you think things are going to go poorly.
Hopefully, Democrats as well as Republicans will realize that shutdowns killed jobs and businesses and did not save lives.
Another covid issue is what they call “breakthrough infections,” when vaccinated people catch the virus. People wonder how that can happen, and they wonder why – after being told that they wouldn’t have to wear masks if they got vaccinated – that they are now being told to wear masks, vaccinated or not.
The confusion arises because of overselling and dishonesty by government officials, most notably the president.
The vaccine was 90 percent effective against the original virus, and in some recent cases may be less effective against the currently dominant variant. No vaccine is 100 percent, and the promise about masks was the president trying to snow people.
Experience is teaching us that the vaccine should be seen as not just a preventative – something that may keep you from getting the virus – but also as a prophylactic therapeutic – something you take before you get sick that minimizes the effect of the sickness upon you. A vaccine can keep you from getting sick, that’s the first hope. But this vaccine and this virus also seem to be shaping up in a way that the vaccine can keep you from dying if you end up getting sick anyway.
And that’s good.
The secondary goal is not getting sick. The primary goal is not getting dead.
That’s where we are today. We have a whole new element of uncertainty, because of the potential for more government shutdowns of our society. And we have a clearer understanding of the potential benefits of the covid vaccine.
But just like always, this is nothing we can’t handle. There is no need for panic. And we will get through this fine, if we can just keep the government and the political manipulators from screwing it up.